Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., ARA, RWS

(British, 1833-1898)

Study of the head of Danaë for Danaë and The Tower of Brass and Danaë and the Brazen Tower

Footnotes

The sitter of the present lot was Marie Stillman (née Spartali). W. Graham Robertson observed that Stillman was 'Mrs Morris for Beginners...the two marvels had many points in common: the same lofty stature, the same long sweep of limb, the "neck like a tower," the night dark tresses and the eyes of mystery, yet Mrs Stillman's loveliness conformed to the standard of ancient Greece.'¹

Spartali was known to Burne-Jones from the mid-1860s, when she purchased Cupid Discovering Psyche (British Museum Acc. no 1954,0508.8). An unfinished portrait exists begun circa 1880 and her features appear in a number of paintings including The Mill (1870-82, Victoria and Albert Museum), The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (1881-1898, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico) and most notably in Danaë and the Brazen Tower (1887-1888, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Art Gallery).

A similar study, made in 1885 (now in the collection of Amgueddfa Cymru, National Museum Wales, NM Acc. no NMW A 5480), is more like the head in the finished painting, but in the present drawing, made three years later, the artist has appeared to have saught a differing psychological state, with the lips slightly apart and the gaze more apprehensive, using softer shading. It is apparent from comparing the two studies that Burne-Jones preferred to return to the more meditative state of the earlier drawing.

¹Walford Graham Robertson, Time Was: the Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson, 1931, p 95.

We are grateful to the Committee of the Burne-Jones Catalogue Raisonne Foundation for their assistance in cataloguing this lot. The work is listed in the Burne-Jones catalogue, www.eb-j.org.